I don’t know. Can we? Have a look at the photo posted by CNN of Melania Trump seated next to Putin at the G20 dinner for world leaders, two seats away from Angela Merkel. Trump reportedly took Melania’s place at some point as the dinner wore on. If Trump was going to sell out Europe and NATO to the Russian bear, he’d probably find a more discreet way to do it than by chatting with the President of Russia right in front of the Chancellor of Germany. A private hourlong meeting between Trump and Putin with only Putin’s translator in attendance would be suspicious. A public meeting during a major dinner seems less so.

The dinner conversation with Putin was first reported Monday by Ian Bremmer, president of the New York-based Eurasia Group, in a newsletter to group clients. Bremmer said the meeting began “halfway” into the meal and lasted “roughly an hour.”…

Trump, who is among the newest world leaders in the G-20, remained at the dinner for the entire night. He was among the last to leave — after the host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had already departed. Pool reporters with the president saw Putin’s motorcade leave at 11:50 p.m., followed shortly by Trump, who departed the concert hall at 11:54 p.m.

Leaders who witnessed the meeting were “bemused, nonplussed, befuddled” by the animated conversation, held in full view — but apparently not within listening distance — of others present, Bremmer said by telephone. He said he spoke with two participants at the dinner.

Is Bremmer the only source for the length of the conversation?

Another question: Is it unusual for the president to be unattended by a national security officer at a dinner like this? When the news first broke last night that Trump and Putin had chatted privately, with no other Americans around, it sounded like a breach of protocol. Why would Trump want to chat with the leader of Russia without any witnesses from his own side to the conversation? The White House, though, claims that there were no staff for any of the world leaders at the dinner. It was just them, their spouses, and a translator — and since Trump was seated near Shinzo Abe, he had a translator with him who spoke Japanese, not Russian. If he was intent on chatting with Putin, he was stuck using Putin’s translator. (Or, of course, he could have insisted on a translator who spoke Japanese and Russian before the dinner began, expecting that he’d want to chat with Putin at some point.)

The hardest punch you can land on him here based on what we know now, I think, is that it was a bad idea for him to seek Putin out for a chat even in a crowded room, both due to the optics amid the Russiagate investigation and the fact that he should want experienced American foreign policy hands around him to help him negotiate the conversation. (“What kind of information was President Putin conveying as fact to our president and potentially misleading him?”) But that just brings you back to the evergreen question about Trump’s interest in Putin: Is it nefarious/collusive or just tone-deaf and dunderheaded? Or, er, a little of both?

At worst, [Capitol Hill Republicans] seemed to believe Team Trump’s collusion amounted to a “conspiracy of dunces” (as a recent Ross Douthat column termed it)—embarrassing and unseemly, sure, but certainly not so grave as to demand blowing up the entire GOP agenda to address it.

“I think most of us agree that if something did happen, it wasn’t anything malicious … it’s just chalked up to [Trump and his advisers] not being very smart,” one senior Senate aide told me. “When people are pointing to Carter Page as someone who colluded, I don’t have any problem believing that… There are so many people who associate themselves with campaigns that are clowns.” Even the meeting Donald Trump Jr. orchestrated with a Kremlin-linked lawyer was seen as evidence of bumbling ineptitude more than high crimes and misdemeanors.

Trump being Trump, my guess is that he tried to schmooze Putin at the dinner, not conduct serious policy talks with him. Nothing bad could come from that, right?

Two clips here, one of Scarborough and the other of Corey Lewandowski spinning the Trump/Putin chat in his own inimitable way.

Update: A source confirms to BuzzFeed that Trump and Putin did in fact speak for about an hour, and that that was the most unusual thing about the incident. World leaders making small talk is par for the course at events like this. Extended conversations are not.

What caught other leaders’ attention when Trump walked over to Putin towards the end of the evening was not that the conversation was happening — but how long it lasted. A source present on the night told BuzzFeed News the two chatted for a “long time”, emphasizing the point – “long” – several times in an exchange of messages.

]]>3964135Trump had an undisclosed meeting with Putin at the G20http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/18/trump-undisclosed-meeting-putin-g20/
Wed, 19 Jul 2017 01:21:12 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3964066"...held in full view — but not listening distance — of others present."

Remember the “very good talks” President Trump had with Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Hamburg? The meeting was scheduled for half an hour but wound up going over two hours. The First Lady even went in to break up the meeting at one point and Trump and Putin kept talking. Today we learn Trump and Putin held another informal meeting at the G20, this one took place at a dinner for G20 leaders later that night. From the Washington Post:

The second meeting, unreported at the time, took place at a dinner for G-20 leaders, a senior administration official said. Halfway through the meal, Trump left his own seat to occupy a chair next to Putin. Trump was alone, and Putin was attended only by his official interpreter…

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the session, first reported Monday by Ian Bremmer, president of the New York-based Eurasia Group, in a newsletter to group clients. Bremmer said in a telephone interview that he was told by two participants who witnessed it at the dinner, which was attended only by leaders attending the summit and some of their spouses.

Leaders who reported the meeting to him, Bremmer said, were “bemused, non-plussed , befuddled” by the animated conversation, held in full view — but not listening distance — of others present.

The Post isn’t saying or even suggesting that anything nefarious happened here. Indeed, one of the Post’s sources says this type of thing is not unusual at such dinners. The reason this is different is obviously because of the speculation it will foster about Trump and Putin. What were they (and Putin’s translator) talking about out in the open but out of earshot?

Trump apparently relayed a version of the conversation to his own White House aides but didn’t inform the media. I’m not sure that was a smart move, not because I suspect anything inappropriate was discussed, but because the media is so primed to believe the worst at this point it might have been better to avoid the perception this was being held back from them.

]]>3964066There’s a national debate about left-wing violence taking place…in Germanyhttp://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/14/theres-national-debate-left-wing-violence-taking-place-germany/
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 19:21:30 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3963548"Years of looking the other way and a mistaken liberality towards criminality [from the far left], has come back to strike us..."

Last week I wroteseveralposts about the riots that took place at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. As I predicted in the final post, the riots did not end when the Summit was over. From the Local:

Violence continued to rage after G20 leaders returned home Saturday, with far-left protesters setting fire to a number of vehicles into the early morning hours, police said.

Demonstrators gathered after the close of the summit in the Schanzen district, a stronghold for radicals which was the site of multiple confrontations since Thursday.

Armed with glass bottles and targeting vehicles, many of which they set on fire, the rioters were pushed back by officers, using water cannon and tear gas, police said on Twitter.

At a news conference, the head of operations for Hamburg police, Hartmut Dudde, said 476 officers had been injured since Thursday in a deployment of more than 20,000 officers, and 186 people were detained.

The violence and arson led to some public pushback from a number of sources, including Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own party. From the Local:

“Years of looking the other way and a mistaken liberality towards criminality [from the far left], has come back to strike us in Hamburg,” said Thomas Strobl (CDU), interior minister in Baden-Württemberg…

Günter Krings (CDU), permanent secretary in the Federal Interior Ministry, said that the port city urgently needed to lay out plans for “how it will dry out the swamps in parts of its inner city where lawlessness and contempt for the state prevail.”

Germany’s Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, criticized one notorious anarchist flop-house, known as the Rote Flora or Red Flora. The Red Flora is a 19th century concert hall which over the subsequent decades was a movie theater and then a shopping mall. In 1989, leftists occupied the building and it has been a flop house for radicals ever since:

Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière criticized the Rote Flora on Tuesday, saying that such places “cannot be tolerated”.

“When this becomes a habit, it is not so easy to solve it,” he said.

Members of the conservative Bavarian CSU party wrote in a paper released on Tuesday that “virtually extralegal spaces like the Rote Flora [in Hamburg] must systematically be shut down”.

“These places are breeding grounds for danger to the life and limb of the entire population. This must be stopped by all means.”

Admittedly, some of this is politics. Merkel is up for reelection in a couple months and given that she chose Hamburg as the site for the G20 knowing it was a haven for left-wing radicals, the riots last week look bad for her. But the fact that nearly 500 police officers were injured and dozens of cars set on fire means there is also a genuine reason for Germans to be upset.

What’s striking as a U.S. observer is that similar national conversations are not taking place here at home. If you’re first thought is, well, we’re not having left wing riots here, you’re wrong. We’ve had a series of similar riots in Seattle, at Berkeley, Middlebury, and in Portland. After the election, there were violent protests in Portland and Oakland and of course a rash of vandalism and violence by the far left at the inauguration itself which left half a dozen police officers injured. There have also been dozens of individual threats and acts of violence which appear to be politically motivated. Finally, we can’t leave out the recent attack on GOP members of congress in Alexandria, which appears to have been motivated by political animus.

There seems to be resistance to discussing this topic, from the left obviously, but also from the national media which is mostly made up of people on the left. In addition, the left has the extremely well-funded SPLC which routinely provides information and quotes to reporters about the threat of right-wing violence. But the right lacks a group dedicated to highlighting the threat of left-wing violence. The result is that you have a fewarticles about the growing trend of left-wing political violence, but nothing compared to the outpouring of newsprint we saw after the Tucson shooting (which it turned out had nothing to do with the political right).

The trend won’t go away simply because the media refuses to connect the dots. On the contrary, lack of attention guarantees this problem will continue to grow. We will eventually have a national discussion about this but, as in Germany, I suspect it won’t happen until something even more horrible than the Alexandria shooting takes place.

When mass protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin erupted in Moscow in December 2011, Putin made clear who he thought was really behind them: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

With the protesters accusing Putin of having rigged recent elections, the Russian leader pointed an angry finger at Clinton, who had issued a statement sharply critical of the voting results. “She said they were dishonest and unfair,” Putin fumed in public remarks, saying that Clinton gave “a signal” to demonstrators working “with the support of the U.S. State Department” to undermine his power. “We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs,” Putin declared.

Also noteworthy:

Putin reportedly obsessed over Qadhafi’s violent death in Kremlin meetings. The graphic video of the Libya ruler’s bloodied body being dragged by a mob is often replayed on Russian television, along with Clinton’s wisecrack about the executed strongman: “We came, we saw, he died.”

It was Hillary, not Trump, who was the greater enthusiast for intervention against authoritarians abroad, Putin’s worst nightmare. It was also Hillary, not Trump, who spent the fall talking about getting tough with Assad by imposing a no-fly zone in Syria, whether or not that meant possible conflict with Russia in the skies over Mesopotamia. (The Trump administration has since warmed to the idea of a no-fly zone, but only in coordination with Moscow.) And of course it was Hillary, not Trump, who more robustly supported multilateralist “globalist” institutions like NATO and the EU designed to check Russian power. Trump’s opinion of NATO can be fairly robust as well depending on the day, but the fact remains that he called it “obsolete” on the campaign trail, refused to commit to Article 5 at the NATO summit last month (although he did later), and has complained constantly about potential repercussions if European allies don’t pull their own weight on defense. I think President Trump would honor Article 5 if Putin made a move on an ally in eastern Europe, but there’s enough doubt that Moscow may want to test U.S. resolve at some point. There’s little doubt how Clinton, a hawkish Democrat who would have held a grudge against Putin as president for his campaign shenanigans, would react.

Those are just the policy reasons to believe that Russia preferred Trump. Trump’s conspicuous reluctance to criticize Putin, even when pressed on the curious tendency of Russian journalists who’ve criticized the government to die young, was a red-fonted alert that a Trump White House would be less judgmental, shall we say, of the Kremlin’s excesses abroad than a Clinton White House would have been. It probably is true that the military under Trump will be better funded than it would have been under Clinton, but why does Russia care about that? A stronger U.S. military that won’t stand in its way, that may even ally with it in pursuing its interests in Syria, is less of a threat than a weaker U.S. military that’s placed in its path.

The real significance of this clip, I think, is that it all but proves that Trump still doesn’t believe the intelligence findings that Russia hacked the DNC and John Podesta in hopes of helping him win. If, logically, Putin should have preferred a Clinton presidency to a Trump presidency, how would it make sense for Moscow to aid the Trump campaign? It’d be self-sabotage. Exit quotation from Rob Goldstone’s now famous email to Donald Trump Jr in June 2016: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump…”

Why mention the chitchat about a joint cyber effort in the first place if it’s a palpably insane idea that “can’t” happen? All that would do, and did do, is expose the president to ridicule from the entirety of Twitter, including members of his own party:

Partnering with Putin on a "Cyber Security Unit" is akin to partnering with Assad on a "Chemical Weapons Unit". 2/3

In Trump’s semi-defense, he reportedly pressed Putin on campaign hacking for 40 minutes during their meeting with their exchange growing “heated” at times. On the other hand, that account comes from a senior White House official who spoke to Rex Tillerson, the only other American official in the room besides Trump. If Trump had gone easy on Putin, there’s no chance Tillerson would reveal it. That was the point of limiting the meeting to just the two leaders, their top diplomats, and interpreters: If an unfavorable leak came from the American side, Trump would know exactly whom to blame. Even assuming Tillerson’s account of what happened is true, his own press conference afterward hinted strongly that this was the last word on the matter. Whether Trump believed Putin’s denials or not, the two countries are “moving forward.” The joint cybersecurity force was part of that. For about 12 hours.

Tillerson has another reason besides covering his own rear to broadcast that Trump was tough on hacking when he met with Putin. The weaker the White House looks on Russia, the greater the chance that House Republicans will pass sanctions that tie Trump’s hands diplomatically:

In meetings in secure rooms, administration officials are quietly making the case to Republican members that the sanctions bill they rushed through the Senate on a 97-2 vote needs waivers to give Trump the flexibility to negotiate with Putin…

Behind-the-scenes: Paul Ryan and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Ed Royce want the bill passed fast, and in its tough current form. Both men are Russia hawks, and unlikely to insert waivers into the legislation just to make the White House happy. They will, however, take seriously the concerns of a range of U.S. companies, from Exxon to Boeing, who believe the current bill disadvantages American businesses…

Administration officials are acutely aware of the political pickle this puts them in. “He can’t veto Russia sanctions,” one told me. “Are you f—ing kidding me? Your first veto of the administration is to protect Russia?”

Even if he had the stones to veto the bill, the 97-2 margin in the Senate and likely heavily bipartisan margin in the House means Congress might override the veto, not only locking the U.S. into an anti-Russia posture but humiliating the president in the process. He’d sign the bill purely for the sake of avoiding that scenario, I assume. I can’t quite believe, though, that Ryan would make him choke on this, whether or not he’s a Russia hawk. The Speaker’s been very compliant with the White House so far. Why would he risk Trump’s wrath by letting a bill come to the floor that would blow up his grand plans for Russian detente?

By the way, if you’re still unconvinced that Trump had every intention of following through on this cockamamie joint cybersecurity effort with Putin until the world started making fun of him for it, consider the reaction of his own top advisors. Nikki Haley was asked about the idea yesterday and said, “From a cyber standpoint, we need to get together with Russia. We need to tell them what we think should happen, shouldn’t happen, and if we talk to them about it, hopefully, we can cut this out and get them to stop.” Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was even more enthusiastic, calling it a “very significant accomplishment.” Under the bus they go.

After two days of vandalism, arson and skirmishes with police in Hamburg, Germany, anti-capitalists were apparently hungry from all their hard work. Last night several hundred people looted a small market and other stores, stealing everything they could after breaking inside. These are communists after all. What belongs to you, belongs to them:

The communists made a bonfire in the middle of the street and vandalized banks. Around midnight, German special forces were sent in to restore order:

By morning, the Antifa goons had retreated and police came through to clear blockades. Just look at the damage done here. This clip is nearly 3 minutes long but it really gives a sense of the destruction of this neighborhood:

Later Friday the showdown between the anti-capitalists and the police continued in the streets:

Today is the last day of the G20 meeting, but with tens of thousands of communists in town today, it’s possible tonight will be another night of vandalism, arson, and looting before the mob finally returns to wherever they came from. From CNBC:

The head of Hamburg police said he was shocked by the “wave of destructive anger”, riots and arson committed by demonstrators since Thursday…

In the last three days, more than 200 police officers have been injured. Some 143 people have been arrested and 122 taken into custody. The number of injured protestors was not available. On Friday night, special armed police had been deployed with sub-machine guns…

Hamburg residents inspected the destruction on Saturday and said they were angry the summit was taking place there.

“Merkel underestimated the protests. The least she can do now is come visit (the district of) Sternschanze and see the damage for herself,” said Kai Mertens, a 50-year-old programmer.

Merkel condemned the violent protests yesterday. She is up for re-election in September and the G20 was supposed to show off her credibility as a world leader. She probably doesn’t want to draw attention to the riots and looting that took place.

A short but virtuosic bit of provocation from Darth Troll, especially the “but you have to ask him” bit at the end. He knows that Trump damages himself every time he equivocates about Russian campaign hacking. And he also knows that, of the two of them, only one is willing to answer reporters’ questions at the G20 this weekend — and it ain’t the leader of the free world. By giving this answer, Putin puts Trump in a no-win position: If Trump says he did believe Putin when he insisted that Russia didn’t meddle in the campaign, he looks like Moscow’s useful idiot. If he says he didn’t believe him, Putin gets to feign offense and warn somberly that such mistrust will jeopardize the two countries’ new understanding about Syria.

Trump and Putin, Tillerson announced, “agreed to explore creating a framework around which the two countries can work together to better understand how to deal with these cyber threats.”

A framework for understanding? Not consequences? Not sanctions? Not even the threat of retaliation from the United States?

There is no need for a framework of understanding. Vladimir Putin understands what this diplo-feculence means: The Trump administration will not punish him in any way for his aggressive attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. And we don’t need a framework for understanding to see what that’ll mean for future elections—here and elsewhere: It will happen again.

Russia will bear no cost or consequence for its attack on American society. Instead, we will mutually agree not to meddle with each other—validating a longstanding Kremlin lie that unrest in Russia is due to U.S. interference, rather than discontent with Russia’s stagnant economy and shrinking personal freedoms.

To be clear: Putin isn’t going to stop what he is doing—in the U.S. or elsewhere. Kremlin ideologues are quite clear that their asymmetric capabilities give them a key advantage against their adversaries, and will be heavily invested in, in a variety of ways. They state openly that their advantage is in these asymmetric means—information, influence and cyber operations; the use of “guerrilla” cells that can carry out activities in Europe and the United States; cyberattacks against critical infrastructure; cultural outreach; and more—and that they will use this means to achieve their goals of undermining NATO and American power.

I doubt Trump’s willingness to look the other way at Russia’s campaign interference is unconditional: So long as Moscow doesn’t embarrass him in Syria and maybe grants the White House a small but showy diplomatic victory now and then, Putin will be absolved. You can call that realpolitik if you like, but (a) realpolitik doesn’t usually involve the leader of one country possibly benefiting electorally from crimes committed by the other and (b) some of Tillerson’s blather yesterday about supposedly overlapping U.S./Russian interests isn’t encouraging. He claimed at one point that the two countries’ “objectives are exactly the same” in Syria, which is true only if you ignore the fact that that country’s Russian puppet leader was bombed by the United States three months ago for gassing civilians. The U.S. wants Assad out, sooner if not later. Russia obviously doesn’t. Even our allegedly common interest in defeating ISIS isn’t as common as it may at first seem. Assad and his allies use the threat from ISIS as a justification for his continued rule, the iron hand that’s keeping the terrorists at bay. The U.S. wants ISIS eradicated, both for its own sake and as a precondition of Assad stepping down. Why would Russia want that?

Putin discusses his Trump meeting in the first 4:30 here. In light of yesterday’s discussion, consider this: What incentive does Russia have to not interfere on Trump’s behalf in the 2020 election? If the worst pain they’re going to suffer for their 2016 shenanigans is a polite talking-to during a private meeting at the G20 then future meddling is a costless exercise at worst. At best, it might earn Trump’s (quiet) gratitude or at the very least place him in an even more awkward political predicament where he seems ever more beholden to Russian active measures in gaining and holding power. Making Trump look like a Russian stooge is all upside for Putin, even if it’s not true. Which, of course, is the whole point of his comments here about Trump supposedly taking him at his word about Russian hacking.

Did you happen to hear the latest portents of doom and disastrous tidings out of the G-20 summit? After all of the work that was put in (or at least all of the photo ops were established) the entire thing may come crashing down upon itself. The reason? During a presentation being given on partnership opportunities with Africa, President Trump was seen abandoning his post at the table where he was listening to the speech and being replaced by (insert Dramatic Hamster music here) his daughter Ivanka.

Trump’s presence at the high-level table was somewhat unusual, given that government ministers are typically the ones called to stand in for heads of state at such sessions.

Ivanka, who entered the session with her father, “briefly joined the main table when the President had to step out” a spokesman for the first daughter said.

It isn’t the first time that she has participated in high level meetings at the summit.

Actually, the Post’s response was exceptionally muted when compared to some others. (But keep an eye on that comment about how the President had to “step out” of the meeting. We’ll get back to that in a moment.) A few well known reporters were all over this world-shaking event quick like a bunny.

This is utterly bizarre, if true: Ivanka Trump sitting in on G20 working group in place of her dad. https://t.co/pM6IuAsGAI

Charles Blow of the New York Times chimed in with the following calm, reasoned observation on Twitter. (I had to get this one second hand since the tough-as-nails “visual op-ed columnist” for the Gray Lady blocked me after I previously penned an unfavorable column about him.)

Why the hell is Ivanka Trump sitting in for daddy at G20 meetings?! What are her qualifications? Who voted for her?

So this was quite the disaster, eh? Imagine the nerve of the President not only abandoning his important duties, but letting one of his children take his place. It was an insult to the assemblage. Or… perhaps not. Someone at Bloomberg actually took a moment to examine the situation and found that there was nothing to see here and Trump was simply doing what many of the other assembled leaders had done throughout the day.

A spokesman for Ivanka Trump said she had been sitting in the back of the room and then briefly joined the main table when the president stepped out. The president of the World Bank addressed the meeting, which was about African migration and health — areas that would benefit from a facility that Ivanka Trump and the World Bank had announced shortly before the meeting, the spokesman said.

G-20 leaders are allowed to bring staff into the room for some of the meetings, and when other leaders stepped out during today’s session, their seats were briefly filled by others. Ivanka Trump serves as an unpaid adviser to her father, as an assistant to the president.

Ivanka Trump is a presidential adviser and travels on many of these trips as part of the staff. Donald Trump was not the speaker nor did he have any “official duties” at that point beyond listening to the presentation. If you don’t think his daughter is capable of doing that much and summarizing it for him later then you apparently have a problem with women.

Oh… and why did President Trump “step away” as the Washington Post describes it? Bathroom break? Just bored with the proceedings and wanted to check on the baseball scores? Nope. Bloomberg had that angle covered as well.

Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, took his seat at a Group of 20 meeting table in Hamburg, sitting in for the president when he stepped away for one-on-one meetings with world leaders.

Hm… meeting one-on-one with other world leaders sounds like a rather plausible reason to be briefly away from the table during a lengthy speech. In light of all this I may have to rethink my original assessment. Perhaps the world isn’t going to end today over this after all.

I wrote about this yesterday but the situation has escalated today as anti-capitalist protesters tried to disrupt the G20 meetings taking place in Hamburg, Germany. From CBS News:

Anti-globalization activists clashed violently with police across the German port city of Hamburg all day Friday, setting cars ablaze and trying to enter the convention center where Group of 20 leaders tackled topics like international terrorism, climate change and trade issues.

Responding to a second day of protests, police ordered in more than 900 additional officers from across the country to get the clashes under control. Over 160 police officers were injured, dozens of activists had to be taken to the hospital and more than 70 protesters were detained.

The First Lady was prevented from attending a group event because of the protests. From CNN:

Melania Trump’s spokeswoman told reporters the first lady was unable to take part in scheduled events with other G20 spouses due to the protests. “Hamburg police couldn’t provide clearance for us to leave,” Stephanie Grisham said.

The spouses were due to take a river cruise and tour a climate change center, according to media reports.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the violence saying, “I have every understanding for peaceful demonstrations, but violent demonstrations endanger human lives, they endanger people themselves, they put police officers and security forces in danger, put residents in danger, and so that is unacceptable.”

The fire-setting started last night during skirmishes with police:

Friday morning, things escalated. This clip shows a large mob of black bloc goons marching down the street, breaking windows and setting cars on fire:

This video from RT UK shows a firemen trying to put out a string of flaming cars:

Here’s another clip showing some of the damage in the same area:

The mob wasn’t just interested in property damage. Heavy published a video of one of their “video contributors” being attacked by a group of men who repeatedly call him a “Nazi pig.” In the clip, you can see people advising him to run and he is asked if he is a Nazi or “pro-Trump” which is apparently the same thing:

I wonder if the reporter who was attacked is grateful these were anti-Nazis or if the boots feel pretty much the same either way?

]]>3962599Russian FM: Trump told Putin he accepts his assurances that Russia didn’t meddle in the electionhttp://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/07/russian-fm-trump-told-putin-accepts-assurances-russia-didnt-meddle-election/
Fri, 07 Jul 2017 20:41:46 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3962597"There was not a lot of relitigating of the past."

Do we dare accept the word of Bond villain Sergei Lavrov about what Trump said to Putin, mindful that Trump has spent the past six months publicly questioning Russia’s culpability? This isn’t some out-of-left-field claim. It’s precisely the sort of thing you’d expect Trump to say based on things he has said even though it contradicts the FBI, CIA, and DNI.

Easy prediction: The White House will spend the next day, or several days, denying that Trump said anything like this and then Trump himself will confirm it offhandedly during an interview. Wouldn’t be the first time.

There’s no way to know who’s telling the truth because the two sides kept participants to a bare minimum. It was just Trump, Putin, Lavrov, Rex Tillerson, and two translators. I wonder which country insisted more strongly that the meeting be small. Given what happened the last time Trump met Lavrov, it may be that the White House wanted to make sure there’d be no leakers around to let the media know in case Trump said something “problematic.”

Tillerson gave an off-camera briefing afterward. Listen to his emphasis in the snippet below about “moving forward” or what he said elsewhere about how there “was not a lot of relitigating the past”. It seems like what happened is that Trump dutifully brought up the campaign hacking, Putin dutifully denied it, and then they both quickly decided that it wasn’t worth dwelling on when there are larger matters to discuss. This is amusing:

Mr. Tillerson said the meeting went long because the two sides “had so much to talk about,” adding U.S. officials had sent first lady Melania Trump into the room to see if she could bring it to an end.

She failed. The meeting rolled on for another hour, per Tillerson, thanks to the “very positive chemistry” between the two leaders. I can picture Trump’s aides sweating outside, increasingly nervous as the minutes ticked by that Trump was inadvertently spilling valuable intel or agreeing to sell Alaska back to Russia or something, finally deputizing Melania to go in and try to break it up as an “in case of emergency” option. According to Lavrov, the U.S. and Russia ended up agreeing to set up a “joint working group” on cybersecurity. Which, as a Twitter pal said, is like setting up a joint working group between the FBI and the mafia.

What else did anyone expect to hear? Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met for the first time as heads of state on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, with the press breathlessly reporting on handshake dynamics. The two exchanged pleasantries in public, and both characterized the meeting in positive terms:

President Trump at meeting with Russian President Putin: "We've had some very, very good talks" https://t.co/uQTp3ltTFV

With broad grins and a warm handshake, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin warmed up for their historic encounter on Friday under the shadow of U.S. outrage about Russian election-meddling and nagging questions about potential Trump campaign collusion.

Ahead of a formal, sit-down meeting, Trump and Putin were seen exchanging pleasantries as a leaders’ retreat got under way in Hamburg. A brief video clip showed Trump outstretching his hand to Putin as officials gathered around a table, then patting Putin’s elbow as both men smiled. In another clip, Trump casually patted Putin on the back as they stood side by side.

Afterward, Putin expressed his “delight” in meeting with Trump. “I hope, as you have said,” Putin added through an interpreter, “our meeting will yield positive results.” It wasn’t the only indication of positivity either:

Trump/Putin meeting running longer than scheduled. Over an hour so far.

Getting positive results is easier said than done, at least looking from the outside. Right now, Russia and the US have few common interests, and fewer common approaches to dealing with them. For instance, just hours before this meeting took place, Russia objected to the US effort to expand sanctions on North Korea. They questioned whether the recent missile launch really involved an ICBM at all, even though Pyongyang bragged about it:

Russia objected on Thursday to a United Nations Security Council condemnation of North Korea’s latest rocket launch because the U.S.-drafted statement labeled it an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and Moscow disagrees, diplomats said. …

Moscow’s resistance to defining Pyongyang’s missile launch as long-range does not augur well for Washington’s planned push to impose new U.N. sanctions on North Korea. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Wednesday that she plans to propose new measures in coming days.

Moscow has said it believes North Korea fired an intermediate range ballistic missile on Tuesday, while China has not identified the rocket launched. North Korea said it tested an ICBM and the United States said that was likely true.

“The rationale is that based on our (Ministry of Defense’s) assessment we cannot confirm that the missile can be classified as an ICBM,” Russia’s U.N. mission said in an email to its Security Council colleagues.

Even if that’s the case — and it’s far from clear that it is — North Korea’s statement makes it plain that they intend to pursue ICBM technology that will put the US at direct risk of an attack. That is an explicit violation of current UN resolutions, and current sanctions based on those resolutions haven’t deterred the Kim regime from this policy. The Russian explanation for their balk is sheer sophistry, and an indication that Putin has no real interest in working toward common ground on security issues, even when dealing with rogue regimes that use VX nerve agent for public assassinations, let alone in Syria, Iran, or the Caucasus.

President Donald Trump appeared informal and relaxed; Russian President Vladimir Putin was steely.

We’ll get readouts soon enough from both sides, which will almost certainly provide nothing but anodyne and superficial observations, but the leaks may take a little longer. Only four other people participated in the meeting: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and two translators. Regardless, the New York Times predicts that the Russians will spin it as a win:

Whatever the outcome of the encounter on Friday — which will be on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting of world leaders in Hamburg, Germany, but is expected to overshadow it — the Kremlin is betting that Mr. Putin can stage-manage the event so that he comes out looking like the stronger party.

If nothing much emerges from the meeting, analysts said, the Kremlin can repeat the standard Russian line that Mr. Trump is weak, hamstrung by domestic politics.

But if Mr. Trump agrees to work with Mr. Putin despite a list of Russian transgressions beginning with the annexation of Crimea and ending with its interference in the 2016 presidential election, he will also look weak while Mr. Putin can claim that he reconstructed the relationship.

“It is a win-win situation for Putin,” said Andrei V. Kolesnikov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

True, but one can just as easily predict that the White House will spin it as a win for Trump, too. So what? The real issue for both is that there are no obvious areas for cooperation without surrender of significant interests on both sides, and Trump’s political situation at the moment prevents that from taking place. If Trump doesn’t get caught on an open mic bragging about having “more flexibility” to offer concessions after the next election, he’ll still be ahead of the game.

Update: Well, it must have been “good,” because it went on far longer than the scheduled 35 minutes:

President Trump, who owns more hotel rooms than you’ll ever search on Trivago, could not get one for his stay in Hamburg during this week’s G-20 summit.

The annual summit location was announced for Germany’s second-largest city 17 months ago, back when no rational person thought the New York billionaire had a chance in Haiti of actually becoming the most powerful man in the world. Lo and behold, he did.

But he took office only on Jan. 20 this year, by which time there wasn’t an ice-machine room available in the German city of 1.7 million-plus.

Watch if some media attempt to gin up news stories that no hotel would take the American leader.

Of course, President Obama’s State Department, run by noted windsurfer and one-time presidential-election loser John Kerry, might possibly maybe conceivably have been tempted to raise the issue of July G-20 hotel reservations during the winter transition period that Obama promised would be so smooth. But it didn’t.

Now, you don’t just call up a hotel and book the presidential suite for any U.S. president. It must be large enough to house a presidential entourage, including staff and several shifts of men and women with curly cords escaping their ear. When Obama flew nine hours each way to his Hawaii holidays, he leased a house. Everyone else filled up Honolulu hotels, which wasn’t tough duty.

The Secret Service holds veto power over presidential accommodations, which must be large and secure enough from intruders, including potentially dangerous vehicles, with easily-reached exits in case of fire, and surrounding buildings and rooftops must be securable from oversight, etc. So, not just any manger will do.

If he can’t fly to Trump Tower each night or one of his own hotels is not available, Trump reportedly prefers Four Seasons, the Canadian chain. But the Saudi king and half of royal Riyadh booked that one a year ago.

So, what to do?

Angela Merkel’s German government stepped up and offered its Senate Guest House for the pain-in-the-neck Republican. His staff is staying at the American Consulate.

All of which is probably actually good, saving American taxpayers a boatload of Euros.

Big-shots on the Obama team, including First Lady Michelle Obama, had a habit of incurring huge luxury hotel bills while traveling abroad throughout their eight-year reign. During a single one-night stay in Paris, Vice President Joe Biden and his group ran up a taxpayer tab in excess of a half-million dollars. For one night.

Anti-capitalists are creating their usual mayhem and violence at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. This year the protest’s organizers dubbed the event “Welcome to hell.” From the BBC:

The violence began when police charged masked demonstrators at a “Welcome to hell” march attended by 12,000 people.

At least 15 police were hurt and three were being treated in hospital, police said. There were no figures for the number of demonstrators injured…

Police fired water cannon and pepper spray at masked protesters, who hurled bottles, stones and flares…

Protesters built makeshift barricades, set vehicles alight, damaged businesses and repeatedly shone a laser at a police helicopter to dazzle its pilot, police said.

Reuters published a breakdown of the number of protesters expected and those who showed up Thursday:

Police expected around 100,000 protesters in the port city, some 8,000 of whom are deemed by security forces to be ready to commit violence. At least 13,000 protesters joined the main march on Thursday, including around 1,000 black-clad anarchists, police said. Up to 20,000 police officers from across Germany are on hand.

There are lots of video clips out there but this one from Sky News gives a sense of it:

If you’re wondering what these people are actually thinking, this BBC report offers an interview with a couple of the protesters. It seems their basic objection is that the G20 isn’t democratic enough and also they don’t like Trump or Putin:

There was actually one protest taking place at the G20 which was intended to be a peaceful alternative to the black bloc goons. This group dressed themselves up as zombies and put on a performance in the street. The point was about political apathy:

Yeah, it’s weird, but a lot more interesting (and less dangerous) than a crowd of Antifa goons throwing bottles at the police.

As the G-20 summit gets underway in Germany, a shocking study out of Britain suggests — are you sitting down? — President Trump’s aggressive statements on trade may actually be working to the benefit of the United States.

Stay with us because you probably won’t see much about this White House success elsewhere. Critics have long suggested that Trump’s bluntness would alienate trade partners or, worse, even ignite trade wars. True, some like Germany are not happy.

But the Center for Economic Policy Research in London has just reported that the other 19 G-20 economies took 52 steps against United States commercial entities in the first six months of this year.

And that, the Center reports, is — wait for it — down 29% from the first six months of last year when someone, let’s say, more aloof and less outspoken was president of the United States. These actions against U.S. interests include quotas, duties and tariffs on imports from the U.S., measures against dumping and tax incentives for exporters that could adversely U.S. companies.

In public remarks and even tweets, Trump has ranted about the global trade playing field being tilted against the U.S. “The United States made some of the worst Trade Deals in world history,” he’s said. “Why should we continue these deals with countries that do not help us?”

Simon Evenett, one of the authors of the Global Trade Alert and a professor of economics at Switzerland’s St. Gallen University, puts it this way:

“The G20 countries that had hit U.S. interests more often before President Trump was elected are the very G20 countries that have cut back on protectionism the most in 2017,” said . “Why should [they] do that unless they feared being singled out for retaliation?”

Evenett thinks such countries have gotten the tougher message out of the new Trump administration.

“It is actually possible,” added Andrew Kenningham of Capital Economics, “that rather than prompting a global trade war, Trump’s rhetoric and policies may have little effect or even lead to more free trade.” This especially applies to emerging countries, he suggests, that might think twice about alienating the new American administration by slapping protectionist measures on American goods.

As another result of Trump’s tough talk and possible protectionist measures including possible quotas or tariffs on steel imports. As proof, the trade report found the U.S. under Trump has already imposed 189 measures against interests in other G20 countries, twice the number implemented during similar periods of Obama’s second term.

But the Center found the U.S. has been by far the worst protectionist offender against G20 countries during the last eight years. Since 2008, the Center reports, “the U.S. has pushed though nearly 1,250 protectionist measures. During the same period, China struck 265 times and South Korea 145 times.”

Get ready for the meeting that will launch a thousand conspiracy theories. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have kept each other at arm’s length ever since the US election, thanks in part to Russian attempts to interfere in the process and Trump’s tough stance on Syria and Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Their first meeting will take place at next week’s G-20 summit, Putin’s spokesman announced today, but it won’t be much more than a handshake:

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will meet on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty summit in Hamburg next week, but no separate meeting is planned, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

That’s a rather shy approach, considering the common assumptions of their affinity for one another. In reality, any substantial contact is more likely to be adversarial. Putin’s not happy with US threats against Assad, even though they appeared to work this week in ending a potential chemical weapons attack out of Shayrat (at least so far). Trump has enough headaches with the Russia probe as it is without inviting more scrutiny into his motives vis-a-vis Putin, and has lots of incentive to prove he can be tough with Russia. For these and other reasons, such as NATO’s nervousness about Trump’s lack of vigor on the Russian threat, it behooves both men to stick to handshakes and pleasantries.

In forceful remarks before Germany’s Parliament on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to defend the international climate agreement spurned by the Trump administration, anticipating a difficult meeting of the leaders of the world’s major economies next week in Hamburg.

Despite the withdrawal of the United States, the world’s second-largest polluter, the E.U. remains committed to the Paris climate accord, she said. But she was blunt about the obstacles posed by American retreat from the deal, which was signed by 195 nations in an attempt to forge global consensus around limiting greenhouse gases.

“Since the U.S. announced that it would exit the Paris agreement, we cannot expect any easy talks in Hamburg,” Merkel said, referring to the Group of 20 summit scheduled for July 7-8. “The dissent is obvious, and it would be dishonest to cover it up.”

The dissent was obvious at the G-7 summit, too, and that’s because Trump was the dissent. He didn’t exactly try to “cover it up” or keep it a secret, either. Trump made a very public display of his dissent, and actively promoted it back here in the US. If Merkel continues to make it the center of the US-EU relationship, she’ll find that it plays directly into Trump’s political hand here in the US.

Merkel might do better by working around Trump on climate change — if that’s really her goal. Energy Secretary Rick Perry held a press conference this week in which he discussed the potential human impact on climate change as an issue for consideration. Perry provide Merkel and her EU colleagues a friendly ear and perhaps an informal way to press their case with Trump, rather than a frontal attack which will instinctually move Trump to confrontation rather than cooperation. That won’t suit Merkel politically, however; her constituents want to see Trump confronted and forced into capitulation. This speech to the parliament was for domestic consumption, a “get tough with Trump” pose. Will she stick with that at G-20, or look for more common areas of interest to emphasize after a nominal push on climate change? Trump should be prepared for either.

It’s just possible that the rest of the world has learned at least one lesson about Turkey following the savage beatdown delivered to protesters in Washington recently by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards. The Tyrant of Turkey is a bit of a thug himself and he obviously likes to hire people of a like mind to be in his entourage. The possible legal battles from that incident are still playing out, but leaders in Germany have clearly been paying attention and don’t want a similar incident taking place at the upcoming G20 meeting. The German Foreign Ministry put the word out this week, letting Erdogan know that his thuggish guards would not be welcome at the event. (Deutsche Welle)

The German Foreign Ministry warned Turkish bodyguards involved in violent scuffles in Washington last month not to attend the G20 summit in July, German media reported on Sunday.

Those warnings were then repeated to Bundestag members in closed-door meetings, respected national daily Die Welt reported.

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said earlier that foreign powers did not hold sovereign powers, saying “foreign colleagues only have the right to self-defense,” the paper reported.

Hamburg Senator Andy Grote told Die Welt: “On our streets, only the Hamburg police have a say – and no one else. This includes foreign security forces.”

It seems that everyone attending the big event had to submit a list of all the personnel they were bringing along. The Germans took a look at Turkey’s submission and found the names of some of the same guards who were kicking in the ribs of protesters in Washington (before fleeing the country with diplomatic immunity) and informed them that they should stay home.

There’s plenty of reason to be cautious. That protest in Washington was small potatoes compared to what the G20 is expecting. They’re preparing for as many as 10,000 “left-wing radicals” to show up and try to disrupt the event. There’s also a large Kurdish presence in Hamburg and you can bet that they aren’t exactly thrilled with the way Erdogan has been trying to eradicate them from Turkey, with particular focus on declaring the PKK a terrorist organization.

If the Germans allow Erdogan’s thugs into the conference they could wind up with the same problems we had with them back in May. Germany offers diplomatic immunity in the same general way that we do. Just this year there was considerable outrage there when a Saudi driver killed a bicyclist and was then able to leave after claiming diplomatic protection. It’s just a pity that we didn’t have the same sort of advance warning before Erdogan’s visit.

That’s when President Trump starts a summer of overseas trips that have nothing to do with opening golf courses.

It should be a fascinating time as the Loud One takes his reality presidency abroad to alter or confirm widespread impressions of the new American leader. Will he perform as he does at domestic rallies? Or will he impress as he did in a January speech to Congress and during the campaign when the candidate traveled to meet with Mexico’s president and looked comfortable and poised like a real president?

Successful foreign trips by presidents have been known to impress Americans back home, where Trump’s approval rating floats underwater.

Trump’s summer itinerary so far begins in late May with a trip to Brussels for a NATO leaders meeting. The president has already sent Vice President Pence and Defense Secy. Mattis there to reiterate strong support for the alliance, despite his campaign description of “obsolete.” Trump has said numerous times since how important is the alliance that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would love to help fray.

But he’s also said each time that it’s past time member countries live up to their long-neglected promise to invest 2% of GDP in defense spending because he won’t be picking up the slack anymore. In February, Pence played the bad cop and provided a time-line of December for significant progress to be made in that area by NATO’s 27 other members.

As is his operating style, Trump has already begun building personal relationships through long telephone conversations with many leaders, including NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who will visit the White House April 12.

At home and abroad, Trump will be closely watched by foreign leaders, their teams and, of course, their media.

Also in late May, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni will host a meeting of the G-7 industrial nations in Taormina, Italy. Trump already accepted his invitation.

During her White House visit last week, the president also accepted an invitation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend the annual G-20 economic summit in early July in Hamburg.

At the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II, Trump has also agreed to make a state visit to Great Britain, likely some time this summer. That will come as Britain enters formal discussions to leave the European Union, a step Trump supported as a candidate before the Brexit referendum last year. After Prime Minister Theresa May’s Oval Office visit this winter, bilateral trade talks will almost certainly be on the agenda.

Trump is keen for them. His predecessor, who opposed Brexit, seemed to threaten the Brits with going to the back of the negotiating line if they voted to leave Europe.

And then, of course, there’s Vlad. The Russian and American leader have agreed to meet, likely sometime later this year. Slovenia is a possible site. That’s where Putin first met President George W. Bush in his first year. More importantly, it’s the homeland of Melania Trump.

]]>3948672China emptied a city of millions of people for the G20 summithttp://hotair.com/archives/2016/09/05/china-emptied-city-millions-g20-summit/
Mon, 05 Sep 2016 20:01:13 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3921114"Choice, Chinese style."

The G20 summit is taking place in Hangzhou, China this weekend. This is the most significant gathering of world leaders ever held in China. In order to present an image of a clean, safe city the Chinese government decided it would be best if millions of people who live in Hangzhou left for a week. Residents were offered some incentives to vacate but, this being China, they really had no choice in the matter. From the Guardian:

In recent days, foreign journalists have been astonished and bewildered at how China’s authoritarian rulers have managed to transform a usually bustling metropolis of 6 million inhabitants into a virtual ghost town to guarantee a trouble-free summit.

More than a third of Hangzhou’s population were reportedly “convinced” to leave town as part of what Chinese state media called a massive exodus that saw cars forced off the roads and a seven-day public holiday declared.

Thousands of residents were ordered to vacate the towering apartment blocks that surround the conference centre where world leaders had gathered, to prevent an assault from above.

Dissidents were placed under house arrest or forced to leave the city by security agents.

Sam Coates, a reporter for the London Times, described Hangzhou as a “ghost town”:

President Xi pronounced the summit a great success on Monday. According to the NY Times, one of his goals was to highlight the strength of Chinese communism:

The party’s resilience under Mr. Xi — on display with giant flags showing the hammer and sickle at security checkpoints — is part of the meeting’s message.

One of Mr. Xi’s provincial successors, the party chief, Xia Baolong, said the meeting would “demonstrate the great achievement of China’s opening and reform, and the immense superiority of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the government’s description of its political and economic system.

It’s funny how Communism always winds up looking and operating like a dictatorship in practice. Thanks for the reminder, President Xi.

]]>3921114A rough start for President Obama at the G20http://hotair.com/archives/2016/09/04/rough-start-president-obama-g20/
Sun, 04 Sep 2016 16:31:31 +0000http://hotair.com/?p=3921025A snub on the far side of the world

Before heading across the Pacific, the President seemed pretty excited about the prospect of meeting with China’ president and signing off on a new global warming treaty which China obviously has no intention of honoring and Congress apparently has no interest in approving at this time. But even though Barack Obama and Xi Jinping at least claim to see eye to eye on climate change, that doesn’t mean that everything in China was going to go smoothly. In fact, the Chinese – normally real sticklers on decorum – seemed to be sending not very subtle signals of their displeasure with the White House before Obama even had his feet on the tarmac. While everyone else was literally given the red carpet treatment, the American president found himself descending his plane’s utility stairway. (AT&T Live)

If President Barack Obama was hoping for a graceful start to his final trip to Asia as commander in chief, this wasn’t it.

Confrontations between Chinese officials and White House staff and other diplomatic dust-ups were out in the open from the moment Air Force One landed in Hangzhou, where world leaders were attending an economic summit.

The first sign of trouble: There was no staircase for Obama to exit the plane and descend on the red carpet. Obama used an alternative exit.

On the tarmac, a quarrel broke out between a presidential aide and a Chinese official who demanded the journalists traveling with Obama be prohibited from getting anywhere near him. It was a breach of the tradition observed whenever the American president arrives in a foreign place.

In case that video went by too quickly, take another look at the President as he descends from Air Force One. Those are the utility stairs which provide access to the plane from the lower section. Normally he embarks and deplanes via a jetway from the main door just to the rear of the cockpit.

Liberty Unyielding has a full set of photos of the other world leaders arriving, but just for one example, let’s see what sort of welcome the Chinese provided for the new Prime Minister of Canada.

Yep, that’s literally a red carpet on the jetway stairs and there was a similar stretch of material on the ground for his family to walk across. And the rest of the dignitaries received the same treatment.

In some ways you might think this is a badge of honor for Obama. He’s clearly upset the Chinese with our refusal to honor their South China Sea artificial islands as China’s sovereign territory and we’ve continued to steam naval vessels past them. But China has had a beef with other nations being represented at the G20 and their leaders didn’t get the cold shoulder like this. Far more likely is the idea that this snub was designed to show that China has no fear of us and not that much respect when you get right down to it.

This isn’t groundbreaking news by any stretch of the imagination and the press will let it fade down the memory hole quickly. But it’s one more example of how America doesn’t carry the same big stick on the international stage that we once did.

Really? Twenty months ago, Obama scoffed at the notion of a threat from ISIS at all, likening them to a junior-varsity squad playing in the NBA. The White House later tried to distance themselves from that remark, which earned them a spot on 2014’s top lies of the year, according to Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler:

In fact, the JV team remark came up in the presser — and Obama gave a dismissive, exasperated reply:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pvGji2gkjs&feature=youtu.be

So does the strategy of occasional bombing change the dynamics on the ground? So far, the answer is clearly and resoundingly NO.

“We play into the ISIL narrative when we act as if they are a state and we use routine tactics used to fight a state that is not a state,” Obama said using the alternative name for the terrorist group. “That’s not what is going on here. These are killers with fantasies of glory.”

Last month, White House announced that the U.S. will send a small number of U.S. special operations forces into Syria as part of a strategy shift in Syria.Obama and his administration have come under mounting pressure amid signs the anti-ISIS coalition has stalled or at least failed to turn the tide against the militants — including the recent Pentagon decision to abandon a failed program to train and equip Syrian rebels.

The problem with this logic is that, unlike the top level of al-Qaeda, ISIS actually possesses and controls large swaths of territory. It’s not just a terror group launching operations from shadowy locations; they operate as a quasi-state, and use that as both a launching pad as well as a claim of legitimacy to tens of thousands of extremists around the world. The only way to defeat an entrenched enemy is to push him off his ground and destroy him in the open field — and the only way to do that is with ground troops.

Instead, Obama wants to send 50 special-ops trainers to help a tiny and poorly organized group of purported moderates in Syria take on an armored and battle-hardened militia. It’s the same basic strategy that got 50 or so Syrians killed at the cost of $500 million.

Obama then oddly argued that preventing these attacks are all but impossible anyway:

Yes — which is why US strategy before Obama became president was to fight terrorists like AQ and ISIS where they were rather than waiting for them to come to us. In fact, that was a point made explicitly and repeatedly by George Bush. Unless we are willing to take that fight to ISIS on a scale that will destroy their quasi-state rather than fantasizing about “containment,” we will continue to see the fight on the streets of the capitals of the West.

Needless to say, that’s hardly a convincing case, especially after the “containment” that produced Paris:

The bottom line from the President — we have the right strategy against ISIS and it is working. That's a tough case to make after Paris.

On top of that, Obama says he won’t change US policy on Syrian refugees either:

“Slamming the doors in their faces would be a betrayal of our values,” Obama said. Syrian “refugees are the victims of terrorism.”

“The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism…they are parents, they are children, they are orphans.” Obama said. “It is very important that we do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”

Most are, certainly — but some aren’t, a point made clear today by France. Guess where six of the eight known perpetrators in the Paris attacks spent some of their time?

According to CNN French affiliate BFM, 6 of the Paris terrorists spent time in Syria.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said yesterday that his state will not accept any Syrian refugees until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security fully reviews its procedures. “Michigan is a welcoming state and we are proud of our rich history of immigration,” the Republican said in a statement. “But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents.”

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentleytweeted at 10:25 p.m. last night: “I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm’s way. We refuse Syrian refugees.”

— With the Louisiana governor’s race coming up this Saturday, underdog David Vitter is pivoting to the issue. It’s a welcome distraction from talking around his liaisons with prostitutes (aka “redemption”). Senate Republican leadership is also looking to give Vitter another show vote this week on punishing sanctuary cities to try helping his flailing campaign–just like Democrats did with the Keystone XL Pipeline for Mary Landrieu last year.

One can expect a lot of head-scratching over Obama’s insistence that his strategy is working in the face of ISIS expansion into international terrorism, at home and abroad. This is as clear a demonstration of cluelessness as could be possible on a global stage, and even the international press was figuring it out.

But it was clear that Putin’s actions over the past few days were top of mind for the leaders.

Abbott lashed out at the Russian leader for apparently flexing his military muscles by sending four Russian navy ships to stalk Australia’s northern coast in the days leading up to the G20 summit.

“Russia would be so much more attractive if it was aspiring to be a superpower for peace and freedom and prosperity, if it was trying to be a superpower for ideas and for values, instead of trying to recreate the lost glories of tsarism or the old Soviet Union,” he said.

Putin’s isolation was evident with his placing on the outer edge for the formal G20 leaders’ photograph. While Obama and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping were met by Australia’s governor general and attorney general when they arrived in Brisbane, Putin was greeted by the assistant defense minister.

Despite being under intense pressure, Putin was all smiles, shaking hands with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The host had threatened to “shirt front”, or physically confront, Putin over the downing of MH17, in which 28 Australians died.

The chilly greeting led to a diplomatic irregularity — having a head of state wandering aimlessly looking for some personal contact. Normally the greetings and handshakes of world leaders get negotiated ahead of time by the diplomats of the nations involved to avoid embarrassment for either party. Putin, however, decided to put Canadian PM Stephen Harper on the spot, and immediately regretted it:

Harper spokesman Jason MacDonald told Canadian reporters Harper had been chatting with a handful of other leaders when Putin entered the room.

Putin approached Harper and stuck out his hand to shake the Canadian prime minister’s, said MacDonald.

After months of public condemnation of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military support for separatist rebels in Ukraine, Harper accepted the handshake with a blunt message.

The prime minister said: “Well, I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine,” recounted MacDonald.

“Mr. Putin did not respond positively,” he said, declining to offer any further details about their conversation, or whether there were any other similar comments by other leaders who were there.

The press flack for Putin claimed to be surprised by this version of events, insisting that Putin and Harper “greeted” each other. Perhaps they mean in the same manner that the Russian navy is “greeting” the north coast of Australia.

Cameron threatened Russia with further sanctions if it doesn’t resolve the Ukrainian conflict amid reports that Russian troops and tanks are flooding into the eastern reaches of Ukraine.

Harper has been a vehement Putin critic for months, with Canada and Russia trading a number of retaliatory sanctions.

He recently condemned the “continued penetration of Russian presence in eastern Ukraine and obvious actions to extend and provoke additional violence. That’s of great concern to us.”

Russia, meantime, took aim at France on the eve of the summit, threatening “serious” consequences if it fails to deliver a warship whose handover has been delayed by the events in Ukraine.

Putin also assailed his fellow G20 nations for imposing sanctions at all, saying in an interview with Russia’s state media that the measures violated G20 principles.

Coming from a man who amputated Crimea by military force and then tried to do the same in eastern Ukraine, complaints about economic transgressions against international law are almost as comical as his attempt to impress the G20. Without high oil prices to keep him and his cronies afloat, Putin may be too clumsy to survive in the long run. The Western-led effort to bring oil prices low needs to continue until Putin buckles under the strain, or his cronies look for someone more suited to the role of world leader.

It can’t be this easy, can it? The espionage spotlight shifted abruptly from US surveillance on allies to Russian snooping on fellow G-20 members in St. Petersburg last month. According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Russians handed out swag bags to the ministers at the conference that included teddy bears, diaries, thumb drives, and smartphone cables. The latter two, however, were later found to have some intriguing modifications:

According to the paper, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, had a debriefing with security officials after returning from St. Petersburg. The report was swiftly picked up by news agencies and newspapers in other countries.

The security team then conducted an examination of the thumb drives, which the Russians distributed as gifts to the 300 foreign delegates, who also received stuffed teddy bears, cups, diaries and cables to connect smartphones with computers, the Italian paper reported. Later, the European Council’s security office sent a report to Group of 20 participants, warning that some of the USB drives, as well as the cables, appeared to have been tampered with, Corriere della Sera said.

The European officials then handed the devices to German intelligence services, which conducted more tests and concluded that the sabotaged electronic equipment could be used to intercept data from computers and mobile phones. Corriere della Sera also reported that Italian secret service agents were still examining some of the devices distributed to Italy’s delegation.

In Brussels, a media official in Mr. Rompuy’s office declined to comment on Wednesday. “There are always measures in place to protect the infrastructure of the council and, as a rule, there is a cooperation with member states,” said the official, Nicolas Kerleroux. “But we won’t comment on any specific matter.”

No one at the conference was dumb enough to actually use them, were they? Or did they just figure that the country that has been run by a former KGB official for more than a decade could be trusted not to snoop on them now that they’re all friends? After all, Putin gave Edward Snowden asylum for exposing those rotten Americans for collecting foreign signals intelligence with an agency that shares the collection with, er, most of the people in the room. Or something.

On the other hand, we have to appreciate the old-school spycraft that went into this effort. The US can tap into the Internet any time they like and has the resources for the brute-force method of data mining. Hiding devices in swag bags … that has the authentic ring of the Bond era, no?

Late yesterday, the UN announced that it would accelerate the departure schedule for its inspection team on the ground in Damascus by three hours, from 7 am Saturday morning to 4 am. Most took this as a signal that American strikes on the Syrian army would shortly follow, and NBC News reports that US assets have already been positioned for military action. Even the missiles have their targets loaded in their guidance systems. All that’s needed now is the order:

According to CBS News, we could be waiting a while. Russia now wants the Obama administration to wait for next week’s G-20 meeting to discuss further what UN inspectors found:

The last of the U.N. weapons inspection team pulled out of Syria before dawn Saturday after four days of field work visiting the suburbs of Damascus hit by what appears to have been chemical strikes on Aug. 21, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reported on “CBS This Morning: Saturday.

The samples they gathered from victims of the attack, as well as water, soil and shrapnel, will now be sent to European laboratories for analysis. The results, and the inspectors’ final report, could take as long as two weeks.

But international politics are moving faster than that. On Saturday, Syria’s international ally, Russia, weighed in. President Vladimir Putin asked the U.S. to refrain from carrying out any strikes on Syria and suggested that next week’s G20 meeting would be a good venue for international discussion on what to do.

Putin said that the idea that the Syrian government would use chemical weapons when it was already winning the war was utter nonsense.

It’s been more than 12 hours since the UN inspectors have left, but still a few hours before the sun sets. One would expect the strike to come in darkness, so the clock will really start ticking at sunset, which comes at 7:01 local time, or noon ET. With Congress coming back in just a few days, the longer Obama waits, the fewer excuses he has to reject Congressional engagement and authorization before striking. If the sun sets in Washington without a strike, it may be quite a while before anything significant happens in the Mediterranean.

What happens after the strike? CBS News interviews Michael O’Hanlon from the Brookings Institute, who believes that Assad will simply absorb the blow and learn his lesson about using chemical weapons. It’s not going to weaken him, however, and while O’Hanlon has a rather sunny view of the results of a one-off attack on the trajectory of the Middle East, he does allow that this might also touch off a regional war. That’s why, O’Hanlon insists, the US and the West need to engage more deeply in the Syrian civil war:

Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September. We value the achievements made with Russia in the President’s first term, including the New START Treaty, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea. However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda. Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship.

***

The Kremlin expressed disappointment, especially with the president’s linking of the decision to the case of Mr. Snowden. A senior aide to Mr. Putin, Yuri V. Ushakov, said that Mr. Obama was still welcome to visit, but blamed the United States for not wanting to build a stronger partnership to manage bilateral and international issues.

“The president clearly made the right decision,” [Chuck] Schumer said. “President Putin is acting like a schoolyard bully and doesn’t deserve the respect a bilateral summit would have accorded him.”

***

“The question the White House has been asking is not about whether Russia is going to give us anything on Snowden … but what will come out of a summit in Moscow that will be useful to the president’s agenda on arms control, missile defense and our economic relationship,” said Steven Pifer, a longtime U.S. diplomat who served in Russia, Ukraine and at the White House. “What I’m hearing from administration officials is that over the last month they’ve had no resonance, no response back from the Russians.”…

Gati also said such a meeting would have exposed Obama to potential embarrassment.

“Imagine this scenario: the president is in a meeting with Putin and Snowden appears on TV or at the Bolshoi with Anna Chapman at his side,” Gati said, referring to a Russian spy expelled from the United States in 2010…

And for all the Kremlin’s pouting, there’s also a consensus in Moscow that, well, there’s not much left to talk about. “Obviously, Obama just can’t come to Moscow with Snowden there, but they made clear they’re not totally shuttering the relationship,” says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a voice that, traditionally, is not far from the Kremlin’s line. “Okay, well now, the score is now 1-1, but the other problem is that the relationship has no content now. Even if Obama came to Moscow, it’s not really clear what they’d talk about.” Lukyanov, who wrote exactly this almost an entire month ago, elaborates: “No one is prepared to discuss a new agenda”—Asia, who gets what in the Arctic—”and the old one is totally exhausted.”

In other words, the Russians aren’t mad, really. They know, as the Americans know, that they’ve reached a dead end of sorts, a cul-de-sac. The question now is, how do they get out of it? And, then where do they go, and how? Given that both governments have other priorities at the moment, and that both have realized that they don’t really need each other, it seems the answers to those questions won’t become apparent for a while.

And this, 22 years after the end of the Cold War, is the recalibration we’ve been waiting for.

***

“Our relationship with Russia has been a roller coaster ride at times,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an interview on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”…

Psaki was the press secretary for Obama’s re-election campaign, and mocked Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney when he said Russia “is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight every cause for the world’s worst actors. The idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed.”

Secretary of State John Kerry “is still meeting with his counterpart on Friday, because it is such an important relationship,” said Psaki. “Secretary Kerry is hoping to continue the conversation, issues where we agree, issues where we disagree … on Friday. And maybe there will be a summit in the future, but it wasn’t the time to do it in September.”

***

The president could stress the absurdity of granting Snowden asylum by insisting on visiting Putin’s strongest adversary, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in prison on trumped up charges. He could invite Alexei Navalny to his hotel room and invite the press to hear about the anti-corruption campaigner’s experience in Russian prisons and why he thinks a Russian Spring is on the way. He could arrange a photo opportunity with the green campaigner Yevgeniya Chirikova, and dozens of other activists who are targeted by Putin’s secret police. He could welcome a group of gay Russians to talk about the laws that persecute them and to warn the world about the rights they will have to forego if they attend the Winter Olympics.

The president could do worse than give a keynote speech in St. Petersburg on human rights, and the abuse of democratic freedoms by spies posing as whistleblowers, rekindling the memory of the great generation of Soviet dissidents, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, and inviting today’s Russian dissidents to sit in the front row. He could make a fuss of the veteran rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva and the president-in-waiting Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster strong-armed out of challenging Putin for the presidency. He might play mood music before his talk by Pussy Riot, two of whom remain in jail for daring to sing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral and have just had their parole turned down.

There is a lot Obama can do if he really wants to live up to Reagan’s example. But does he have the Gipper’s genius for turning the tables on his opponents? If he does push back against Putin, he will win the admiration of Americans way beyond his own party and will increase his chances of advancing his agenda. He should be bold, like he was when he ordered Operation Neptune Spear that ended the life of Osama bin Laden.

***

President Obama prides himself on being cool, calm, and collected. But his latest move—cancelling a summit meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin—suggests that he is having a hissy fit, succumbing to peevishness. It’s wholly counterproductive. In attempting to cow Russia into releasing Edward Snowden, he isn’t showcasing American power but its limitations. The more Obama seeks to challenge Putin, the stiffer Russian resistance will become. Obama’s persecution of Snowden is singlehandedly transforming him into a Russian hero…

When it comes to Snowden, it is America, not Russia, that is behaving as though the frostiest days of the cold war continued to prevail. It seems clear that Snowden has become an obsession with Obama. WIth no one listening to Obama at home, perhaps he felt that this was the one arena where he could flex his muscles. If so, he had it wrong. Obama initially declared that the presidency was bigger than Snowden. If only he had believed what he said. Instead, he has transformed Snowden into a dissident who has found refuge in, of all places, Russia.

I didn’t understand it when this idea was floated two weeks ago and I don’t understand it now. What does Putin care at this point whether Obama pays his respects at the Kremlin or not? He’s already wrung more propaganda value from l’affaire Snowden than he’ll ever get from an official visit with the president and must have assumed when he decided to grant Snowden asylum that this would mean Obama would cancel on him. The question is why O hasn’t canceled already. It’ll look ridiculous even by his standards if he goes to Moscow anyway to kiss the ring after Putin’s embarrassed him this way.

If you want to send a message, albeit at considerable political risk, take Chuck Schumer’s advice. And no, I can’t believe I just wrote that either.

Sen. Charles Schumer, the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, called Snowden, who was stuck in a Moscow airport for 39 days, a “coward who has chosen to run,” and advised the president to reconsider an upcoming trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, for the G-20 summit early next month.

“Russia has stabbed us in the back, and each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife,” Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a scathing statement. “Given Russia’s decision today, the president should recommend moving the G-20 summit.”

Bold but risky: What if O calls on the other G20 nations to snub Russia and they, er, ignore him? That’s the only thing that could make this humiliation worse. And it’s probably what would happen, given that European leaders are suddenly eager to prove to their own electorates that they’re pretend-opposed to things like mass domestic surveillance. If Obama decides to escalate diplomatically over Snowden, he’d have it to frame it in terms beyond Snowden himself — as a protest of Russian treatment of gays and dissidents like Alexei Navalny. At least then he’s got a shot at international support.

Speaking of Snowden, he declared today that “the law is winning” from his new home base of Russia. Yeah.